Jukebox Skipping

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Behind the Scenes with Bar Rescue in Omaha -- Oasis Hookah Bar

Well, it looks like our Barstool Telegraph was at it again last night. As usual, there were several sources reporting in on the happenings during the taping of last night's Bar Rescue.

Led by Deepthroat-esque informant Guy Incognito (no relation to Richie Husker fans)...and assorted others...here is a play-by-play of the evening's events. Apparently the "highlight" of the evening was a forced, staged and now predictable Taffer rant about some stains on a couch. Good lord...hope he never comes to my house! In any case...enjoy the latest recap of events.

HTD informant Guy Incognito

"Just like everyone else in the city, I didn't know this bar
existed until the days leading up to its triumphant rescue. I didn't expect
much from this place, and I wasn't disappointed.

I was really hesitant to even come out tonight after the failure to breach the
front door at O'Ban-- er, I mean, Sorties last Friday night. Plus, the cold
temperatures made me want to stay in my warm quarters for the evening and laugh
at the lemmings lining up along Farnam for several hours into the night.
Apparently that ended up being the thought process for most people, because
this experience was completely different.

Upon my first drive-by around 7:30, no one was standing outside the door at all
(aside from the bouncer), but I did see a small gathering of people on the corner
of 15th & Farnam. Didn't take long for me to circle back around and secure
a parking spot. When I got back to that intersection, the BR staff was starting
to get people lined up outside the door.

This was quite the well-oiled machine! Didn't take long to go through the
process and be handed a red card that was supposed to be used at a moment's
notice at any time during the night when Jon would ask for everyone without a
drink to hold it up. That moment never happened, but hey, free souvenir!

That's a bar?

Everyone had their ID checked at least twice while outside. For some people,
they were checked a third time while in line with a camera on them, I guess to
capture the bouncer doing his job or something.
Walking through the door was very surreal, as I was now in Bar Rescue
territory. What I noticed right away was how quiet and well-lit it was. There
was absolutely no house music playing, and no one manning the DJ booth either,
so this already felt fairly unnatural. Made sense, though, as the music would
probably get picked up by the microphones and be nightmarish to edit around.

They were able to comfortably fill the inside of the joint, but they definitely
didn't pack the place. This wasn't so much a stress test as it was just testing
how the staff can handle a casual Friday night crowd that would be normal for a
bar that does decent business. I couldn't tell if the Oasis staff was
legitimately stressed by the crowd size, or by Taffer himself, who weaved
through the crowd with cameras in tow behind him, ready to strike at the
slightest abnormality.

I felt legitimately bad for the Oasis staff at times, because he definitely
seemed to sometimes dig into them for small gaps in service that naturally
happen in any busy place, blowing certain things out of proportions. His gripes
were legitimate, however, so I won't take away from that. The staff did indeed
seem inexperienced and likely haven't had to deal with large crowds before.

Fortunately, I never really got the feeling that anything was being staged
inside the bar. They may have actually benefited from it in this case, as it
seemed like the drinks were getting poured, hookahs were being distributed, and
everything was going mostly okay. It wasn't A+ service, but it wasn't horrible.
I'm sure the final cut of the episode will make it look like a huge disaster,
but to me, it seemed rather uneventful compared to what you see in a given
episode of Bar Rescue.

Taffer's final big blow-up occurred before 10 p.m. when he noticed some
unsanitary spots on the seating, which seemed to signal the end of the night,
as everyone cleared out at that point. Many times during episodes of the show,
Taffer shuts places down during the stress test when drinks aren't getting to
the customers. But since the crowd really wasn't large enough to back up the
orders, this didn't become a problem. I think he needed to find another
deal-breaker of an issue at the Oasis to end the stress test, and this was it.

I will say that, unlike O'Banion's, I feel like this place probably needs the
help more. It's perfectly forgivable for me to have never heard of O'Banion's
before Bar Rescue's visit, as it's just a dive bar in Bellevue that has no reason to have any
significant level of notoriety for most Omahans. But for me to have never heard
of Oasis, a bar in downtown Omaha,
is pretty sinful. Sticking a hookah bar next to a wig shop on a city block that
is largely passed over when barhopping is a risky business move, and I can't
imagine it has been paying off well, especially when it's hard to find when
you're specifically looking for it. I didn't hear any chatter about the real
situation with the owner(s), but maybe you know more about that end.

Inside scoop!

This place probably has nowhere to go but up, and I doubt there will be a huge
host of people who will be up in arms if he makes some changes. It will be
interesting to see if he sticks with the hookah bar format, as I'm pretty sure
he's never rescued a hookah bar before on the show. If he nixes the hookah
concept altogether, then I can imagine it will probably upset a few people who
go there for their fix.

Overall, the experience was actually fun compared to the mess at Sorties.
Granted, the environment felt odd, but nothing about my personal experience
there felt artificial. The low turnout was a bit of a bummer, especially for
the show's producers, I'm sure. But editing room magic will certainly make it
seem exponentially worse and chaotic. I might try to return for the reopening
since I now have a little more of a vested interest in this particular place, but
we'll see.

Something I almost forgot: They were serving a limited drink
menu that had 3 drinks on it. They all were very tropical themed in their
flavors. There was one with amaretto that I really liked. The other cocktail
was supposed to have a cream soda flavor, but I thought it was pretty bland.
The third drink was a shot. It was blue and fruity, and was par for the course
in the way of fruity shots.

All drinks were being served in plastic cups. I'm not sure if it's because they
don't have any proper glassware (this has been a problem in past episodes), or
if they were used for practical reasons by being one less thing for them to
worry about while trying to just get drink orders out to customers."

It upgraded that location from where it was on the pedestrian mall on 16th St. between Farnam & Harney. Thing is, it's barely a bar: it's a hookah/smoke shop. Not a very strong choice for 'Bar Rescue', Oasis has never had a following even amongst the downtown crowd because it's not really a bar.Mark

It definitely seemed to suffer from an identity crisis. They did have their full cocktail menu still on the tables, but they were only serving the three drinks last night, as far as I could tell. Apparently they didn't want to stress out the staff TOO much by making them work at a normal capacity of having to possess basic bar knowledge of normal drinks. Taffer and producers must have had no confidence in these bartenders whatsoever, so the Bar Rescue staff may have been feeling a bit burned when the Oasis personnel were actually able to keep up (for the most part)!

From what I can tell, Oasis was normally trying to go for a nightclub vibe before the rescue, but they completely neutered the atmosphere last night by turning up the houselights and having no music. That definitely ratcheted up the awkwardness, so this bar felt naked as a result, having no identity of its own anymore. And perhaps that's exactly what Taffer wanted last night -- a bare bones performance test that cut out all the distractions.

They do offer a bottle service, so I thought it was interesting the person who made a comment on the HTD Facebook page that the mixers were served in old Ciroc bottles (this was over the past weekend when the BR staff hadn't officially invaded the bar yet).

Also, I will say the bathrooms need a rescue of their own. I felt like I was in an outhouse made of drywall!

Thanks for solving the mystery that was the 'red card.' It will be interesting to see how they spin it in the episode. It did not seem like it would have been stressful at all....I've worked busier nights than that with just myself and a bar back! It was a cool experience, though.

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